rosalyn virginia: eleven months

This started out as an attempt to squeeze in some eleven month photos juuuuuust before she turns twelve. Honest. But I found myself a bit distracted with these lovely little pockets of light in our house at dusk. Forgive me, baby girl. Your mother was first a photographer. They have yet to find a cure.

There are so many would-be sources of anxiety in this. The house is a mess. I didn’t take the photos “on time”. They weren’t taken in the same style as the previous months. Etc, etc. There are several expected ways in which becoming her mother has “tied” me down or limited my choices. But it is in this way that she has gifted me freedom. She has taught me acceptance. She has empowered me to say to these suffocating demons of mine, “No, thank you. Not right now.”

So this is what life at eleven months has looked like. A little of this, a little of that. Happy chaos. Disordered joy. It has looked like me beginning to melt back into the places I once was; stretching and wriggling into me. My fingers tingle as the blood rushes through.